It did not come as a big surprise that the Republicans won the midterm Senate elections and increased their majority in the House of Representatives. When CNN's predictions of the results agree with those of Fox News, there is not a great margin of error. The results were a foregone conclusion. But the matter does not end there. What happened has happened before. While the Republicans won a majority in these elections, the Democrats have done the same in previous polls. Of crucial importance here is that the American system of government was constructed in a manner that provides for a precise balance between the branches of government and between American political forces. As a result, there is no real loser or winner. Nor can there be a very sharp swing to the far right or the far left. The American pendulum moves within the range of the general political centre, where the vast majority of American hearts and minds reside. Still, there was something different about these midterms. These were about more than what is usually involved in US elections, which recur with amazing regularity at their appointed times and seasons. The elections this time occurred against the backdrop of a high degree of polarisation between the liberal to progressive left in the Democratic Party, and the conservative to ultraconservative (Tea Party) right in the Republican Party. So sharp and pervasive is this polarisation that it has closed down the federal government several times. It has permeated the universities, financial, economic and research institutions and, more importantly, all the news media, some of which have become more in the nature of ideological pulpits. Anyone who has observed the US closely for decades realises that this moment is unprecedented. True, American history has known some unique moments. It experienced moments of self-doubt in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, moments of impetuousness and polarisation in the Reagan era, tremors of various degrees of intensity that followed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic and fiscal crisis. But what we are watching unfold today in the US is of a different order. We have learned long ago that economic circumstances are a crucial determinant of American political outlooks. So too is confidence in America's world leadership. In difficult times, such as during war and crisis, the American people rally around their president. But the results of the last congressional elections virtually refute such long-accepted truths. The US economy is in better shape than it has been for a long time, regardless of whether you use economic growth rates, employment rates or inflation rates as your criteria. Obama managed to take the US by the hand, steer it out of economic crisis and rescue its banking and insurance sectors, its major automobile and construction industries, and a whole gamut of related industries. He did this, moreover, while extricating the US from its failed wars and avoiding other wars, until the Islamic State (IS) spectre compelled it to engage once more in the framework of a large international coalition. This, in turn, put paid to the frequently heard charge that the Obama leadership was “militarily soft.” Yet the president's party not only failed in the elections, it failed in public opinion polls, which awarded it lower marks than it ever received in its history, or that a president's party ever received in a second term. Take a look at Obama. He looks drawn and exhausted most of the time. His speeches have lost much of their magic. Sometimes it seems that he is counting the minutes until the heavy burden of office is lifted from his shoulders. Obama's predecessors have also shown such symptoms, but in his case they are more acute because their implications are greater. Perhaps it is because they are connected to the great dreams and the thrilling expectations that accompanied his inauguration as the US's first African American president, or with the fact that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize not for anything he had done, but for the hopes raised in what he would do. Certainly, Obama has become torn by many doubts. It seems that the only possible way to explain this anomaly in American politics is that Obama's election as president, in and of itself, triggered a profound crisis in the US — one that overshadowed all his achievements, or that caused his achievements to diminish next to his failures. Obama's presence at the peak of the American political hierarchy, and his policies, represented a victory for what Dinesh D'Souza described in his book, America, as the spirit of the “plebeian” youth revolution, with its consumerist and nihilistic values, over the spirit of the 1776 revolution, on the principles of which the US was founded. D'Souza's book is one in a series of important books and articles that speak of the end — and indeed collapse — of the “American era.” These include The End of Influence, by Stephen Cohen and Bradford DeLong; Farid Zakaria's Post-American World; Stephen Walt's article “The End of the American Era” in The National Interest; and, in Forbes, Kenneth Rapoza's “ After Obama Leaves the White House America Will No Longer be Number One.” They all give voice to a very pessimistic mood that is founded on three premises. The first is that as a result of the victory of the 1967 revolt over the spirit of 1776, the American values of hard work, bearing responsibility and rewarding excellence have receded in favour of a consumerist and frequently immoral culture. The second is that other nations have taken advantage of the opportunity presented by America's relative decline to fill the global void. In this context, China, India, Brazil and Russia would be the countries most likely to alter the global balances of power. The third premise is that the results of the midterm elections will give an early lead to Republican lawmakers to set the American legislative agenda that will force Obama into a position of either having to exercise executive “veto” powers or to give in. In short, it looks like the last two years of Obama's presidency will be a “lame duck” period in the fullest sense of the term: Washington will be unable to take decisions or draw up strategies, let alone carry them out. Is this really where the US is heading? The answer to this is, maybe. The US may yet surprise us. The American system of government works in a way that has enabled the US to cope with periods of disequilibrium between the White House and Congress. Also, the US has actually benefited from the rise of other nations, as occurred when Japan and Germany became economic wonders. Finally, if the Republicans managed to resurface after the catastrophes of the Bush administration, the Democrats too can produce miracles. For the moment the focus will now shift to the following question: What are the Republicans going to do with their newly won congressional majority? In all events, this is more than a domestic concern. The entire world needs to watch developments in Washington and to monitor the American pulse.
